


Blame It on the Stardust

by killyourstarlings



Category: Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: Camping, F/F, First Kiss, Just Friends, M/M, MaeBea is the focal point but there's some Grangus (Greggus?) in there too, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-07 14:44:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14673312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killyourstarlings/pseuds/killyourstarlings
Summary: Mae, Bea, Gregg, and Angus decide to go camping.  A game of Truth or Dare between Mae and Gregg (and the fatalistic ponderings of twenty-year olds imagining crazed mountain folk) prompts Mae to test her and Bea's relationship.





	1. He Was a Scout

**Author's Note:**

> For NaNoWriMo 2k17. Three chapters in total.

* * *

_Sorry if you’re starstruck — blame it on the stardust._

_I know that I’m perfect, even though I’m fucked up._

_Hymn for the hymnless; don’t need no forgiveness,_

_And if there’s a heaven, we don’t care if we get in._

\- “Hymn” by Kesha.

* * *

 

“No,” Angus said, his tone especially hoarse.  He tapped his map and caught a fleeting breath.  “I don’t recognize this at all.”

“Really?” came Bea, as she threw a hand out.  “I’ve seen this same tree seven times.  I’m starting to get attached.”

Mae cracked a smile, neck arched to watch the ground.  Her legs tossed out before her, trudging along behind the others in fluffy ripped jeans; her red converse kicked through crunchy leaves of sunset hues and jigsaw shapes.  The air was filled with papery crackles, mingling with the last tweets of sleepy birds and the soft, engulfing whistle of the eastward wind wrapping around their steps.  It was, by Mae’s phone, near enough to six o’clock that her rumbling stomach was justified in its complaints.  And yet, they still hadn’t found their rented campsite — or any sign of civilization at all.

“Are you sure you’re looking at the map right?”

“Yes, Bea, I’m looking at the map right,” Angus droned, audibly frustrated and wheezy.  “Are you using the compass right?”

Bea wrinkled her eyebrows and examined her phone.  “Can you read a compass wrong?”

“ _Well can you read a map wrong_?”

“Easy, hon,” Gregg intervened from the back of the pack, at Mae’s side.  “You were a scout.  You can figure this out.”

“Put your left foot in and shake it all about,” Mae rhymed.  Footsteps stopped up ahead; Mae looked up and found Bea sending her a look.  She cleared her throat and glanced around at the scenery.

After several weeks of back-and-forth on the subject, the four of them had unanimously agreed that this weekend was the perfect opportunity to hit the mountains with bonfires and tentpoles and folk songs enough to drive Bea up the wall.  Just past the borders of autumn but not too near to winter, the trees were lit up in radiant reds against a dimming blue sky, neither night nor day nor sunset in between.

“How far are we now?” Gregg asked, breaking the silence.  Peeking up between the two more serious travelers, he added, “Where are we?”

Angus’s head whipped up as if to snark back, but instead, he sighed.  “If I knew where we were, we wouldn’t be lost.”

Gregg blinked, then drew his head back.  “True that, true that…”

“It’s getting dark,” Mae announced to the general group.  She sniffed against the edging cold, eyes shifting.  “Think there’s crazy mountain people out here?”

“God, I hope so.”

“That’d be dope as eff.”

“We could totally, like, run into a stalkery old man out here,” Gregg enthused, “and die out here and never be found, and that’d be the end of us, no problem.”

“Sounds nice,” Bea said as she snatched the map from Angus’s hands.  “My turn.”

“Hey!” Gregg shot back.  “He was a scout!”

“-I was a scout,” Angus also said, nose twitching in irritation.  He tried to retrieve the map, but Bea was too fast — she lurched to the right.  “I can figure it out; I just need a minute to get my bearings.”

Mae was halfway to making a pun, but Bea again caught her in the act and shook her head.  She held her hands up in surrender, shrugging.

As Angus and Bea collectively sighed over the directions, Mae and Gregg gradually drifted back a few steps, creating a sort of barrier between the fun members of the group and the currently-bitchy members of the group.  Gregg kicked a rock between his shoes as they marched up the incline; when a silence was reached, he knocked it toward Mae, who joined in on the rock-soccer.

“We could play I-Spy again,” Gregg offered, returning to their discussion prior to their friends’ outburst.  “I think we’ve used all the colors, though.”

“You can’t use _all_ the colors,” Mae said, brow furrowed.  “What about… taupe?”

His gaze lowered in thought.  “What’s taupe look like?”

“Hell if I know.”

Gregg chuckled, and tossed a few leaves up with his steps.  “We could do something else — like the alphabet game.”

Though she couldn’t quite figure out how that would work, she didn’t question it.  “Nah.”

Glancing up, he added, “We could race?”

“Too tired.”

“Um… Spin the Bottle?”

She wrinkled her forehead.  “Do you see a bottle?”  Her eyes danced over to Bea for a moment, wondering if she was hearing any of this.  “And you and Angus are monogamous, and that takes all the fun out of it.”

“Gee, thanks,” Gregg muttered.

“No offense, obviously.”

“None taken — fuck love,” he said — and it was the most stilted thing to ever come out of his mouth.  Mae couldn’t keep a straight face.

“You don’t mean that.”

“No, I love love!” Gregg practically sang, throwing his arms out.  “It’s great; it rocks my ass!”

Mae poked her tongue into her cheek and side-eyed Bea, whose head was consistently buried in the map save for the occasional drag off her cigarette.  When she looked back to Gregg, he was clearly waiting for some kind of response.  “Yeah.  Yay love.”

“Your enthusiasm is dazzling.”  With one look up ahead, he slowed his pace more and asked, “Truth or dare?”

“Dare,” Mae said instinctively, shaking her head once.  “Dare me up.”

“You always pick dare.”

“I don’t like forced honesty,” she explained with a shrug.  “You just don’t like it ‘cause you know I’ll do anything.  I’m a dare ninja.”

“Oh, yeah?”  Eyebrows raised, Gregg crossed his arms.  “Even if it’s… sexual in nature?”

“ _Especially_ if it’s sexual,” Mae gloated — and gestured around them.  “ _In_ nature!”

Gregg chuckled, but his expression turned mischievous.  “Are you sure?  I don’t hold back.  You know I don’t.”

Mae waved a hand at him.  “I know, and I don’t need you to.  I’m in prime sexual shape.  Try me.”

At that, Gregg flexed his fingers and pressed his lips together tightly, in deep thought about his first dare.  Mae swung her arms dramatically at her sides as they walked, patiently awaiting her task.

The sky was growing darker the longer they walked; Mae’s lazy legs were growing sore.  She considered hopping up to Angus and Bea and asking if they could _pretty please just set up camp and drop these damn backpacks_ …

“ _No_.  We passed that lake way more than an hour ago.”

“How the ever-loving _fuck_ did you make it as a scout?  Look — at the rest — of the map.”

“We’re going southeast; we’ve been going southeast since the lake.”

“What about when Gregg had to pee?”

“Okay,” Gregg said, head popping up.  “I’ve got my dare.”

Mae’s attention bounced back to him, and she shoved her hands into her pockets.  “Shoot.”

“Pinch Angus’s ass.”

Her jaw dropped slightly.  “What?”

“Give ‘im a squeeze!” Gregg insisted, beaming.  “It’s nice back there — trust me.”

“He’s your boyfriend!”

He squinted at her sarcastically.  “I’m not asking you to take him against a tree.  Just a quick cupping will do.”

Mae sputtered and looked between devilish Gregg and poor, unsuspecting Angus.  “But-”

“I thought you were a _dare ninja_ ,” he said, his voice low.  “Are you saying you can’t do it?”

“Of course, I can do it,” Mae said, “but… he seems really irritable right now, so maybe I should wait until he cools off-”

“ _Mae_.”

Mae huffed in surrender, and began a faster pace so as to catch up with Angus and Bea.  Gregg stayed back to watch, depriving her of any deniability when she did the inevitable deed.  She shot him a scornful look before inching up behind his boyfriend…

“This isn’t a sanctioned area,” Angus went on, while Bea completely ignored him.  He hoisted his backpack up, perfectly unveiling his jeans-clad tush.  “We can’t just camp here.”

Mae inched a hand out of her pocket…

“Or what?” Bea shot back.  “We’ll be attacked by crazed mountain people?”

“We’ll get _arrested._  And fined, probably.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and just did it.  She just reached out and grabbed a piece of that ass — with an appreciative pinch to boot — before leaping back a few feet in anticipation of his reaction, covering her mouth.

Angus didn’t look up, or turn around.  He didn’t even flinch.

Mae blinked, trying to piece this together; she turned back to find Gregg quietly cracking up, doubled over with amusement, the unbridled heathen.

Eyes wide, Mae slowed down until Gregg had caught up with her before hissing, “What the hell, Gregg?  He didn’t even react!”

“Of course not!” he said through fits of chuckles.  “I do it all the time.  He expects it.”

“Then why have me do it?”

“To see your face!”  Gregg howled with laughter, drawing attention from the rest of the group.  Angus’s expression picked up a bit.  Bea blinked and turned back to the map.

Once his laughter had died down, Mae shoved his side.  “All right, all right.  Truth or dare?”

“Dare,” he said triumphantly.  “And make it good.”

“Oh, I intend to,” Mae crooned, crossing her arms.  She hummed in thought over the topic, her head nodding with each step.

Angus and Bea were now giving each other the silent treatment, meaning that the four of them could either stop and make camp now, or walk for hours more until they found the site or reached exhaustion.  There was no indication either way.

While eying Angus, her idea was born.

“Okay,” Mae said, and tossed her head over at Gregg.  “Ready?”

“Yes’m.”

She split a cocky grin and replied, “For the rest of the night, I dare you to call Angus ‘Anus.’”

Gregg’s brow fell with his smirk.  His ears flattened.

“‘ _Anus_?’”

“The butthole,” Mae clarified.

“I have to call my boyfriend Anus.”  Gregg threw a hand out toward Angus’s back.  “He’ll notice!”

“And if he does, you can’t explain it,” she finished, and pulled a stick of gum out of her pocket.  “That’s the dare — take it or leave it.”

He thought this over for a moment, pursing his lips.  “Can I still say ‘babe’ and stuff?”

Mae lifted her chin and shook her head.

“How about ‘you’?  Can I call him ‘you’?”

“Nahp,” she said with a smack of her gum.  “Anus only — you can say it quick but it _has_ to be audible.”

“Can I say ‘ah-noose’?  That’s how the British say it.”

“I don’t think that’s true.  And no.”

He pouted.  “Fine.  I can take it.”

Mae beamed and blew a hot-pink bubble.  “Uh-huh.  And if you mess up, you know what I get?”

“Money?”

“ _Nahp_.”  Leaning over until she was near sideways, she sang, “All your candy.”

_“No.”_

“Oh, yes.”

“That’s not a fair penalty!”

“I take my dares very seriously,” Mae insisted, hand on her chest.  “Or you could always chicken out and do truth.”

Compared to the loss of all his candy, still, this was more abhorrent.  He wrinkled his nose.  “No way, Jose.  Your turn: truth or dare?”

Mae pretended to think it over.  “Um, _dare_ , please.  Make it extra sexual.”

“Sextra sexual.”

“Sextremely sexexual.”

“Smexual it is,” Gregg said, and rubbed his hands together.  “And I’ve already got it — but it’s a doozy.  Prepare yourself.”

“I don’t need to,” she gloated, tapping her temple.  “ _Dare ninja_.”

Gregg started to say something, but just huffed a laugh.  “Okay.  Your dare…”

“Yes’m?”

“I dare you,” he continued with an impish smirk, “to kiss Bea.  Five seconds, on the mouth, tongue optional but recommended.”

Mae… looked at him, head tilted slightly.  Her nose twitched.  He waited in silence.

“Too sexual?” Gregg postulated.  “For the _dare ninja_?”

“ _No_ ,” Mae said with a sniff.  “No, it’s not too sexual.  It’s just…”

Her eyes drifted forward to Bea. who now crumpled up the map and shoved it toward Angus.  She was visibly cold, pulling her black knit sweater over her hands to make little floppy linguine tentacles — visibly tired, legs dragging against her usually-healthy posture, boots shuffling against leaves and roots.  Her sweater hung low over her netted wrap skirt, which pooled over her thick cadet-gray tights, which tucked neatly into her scuffed black army boots…

“Why are you staring a-”

Mae jolted and tripped over an uneven… her foot.  She tripped over her own foot, to be transparent.  Gregg caught her arm before she tumbled either into the ground or into Angus’s ass again; once she stabilized, she froze, as all eyes turned to her.

This included Bea’s.

She cleared her throat.  “Tree root,” she explained, kicking her shoe against the ground.  “Tree root.”

Bea examined her for a moment before resuming her pace.

After a few minutes, Angus and Bea resumed bickering, allowing Gregg the space to lean over and ask, “So are you gonna do it?”

Mae pressed her mouth shut and averted her eyes.  “Truth.”

Gregg squinted.  “Oh, come on…”

“I’d rather do a truth,” she said, pushing her gum out with her tongue.  “I do a lot of dares.”

Smirking, Gregg mumbled, “Okay, then.  I’ve got a truth.”

“Okay, then.”

“Do you _want_ to kiss Bea?”

Mae shoved his shoulder.  “Cut it out.”

“You gotta answer the question.”

“No, I don’t.  Let’s play something else.”

He opened his mouth to protest; then he threw his hands up.  “Okay.  How about Would You Rather?”

She crossed her arms forcefully.  “Fine.”

“Would you rather: kiss Bea, or-”

“Can we set up camp?  I’m tired!” Mae announced loudly, drowning out Gregg’s pestering.  She marched up next to Angus, facing straight ahead, though she knew full well that Gregg was behind her with a horrible smile and a little more information than he needed.


	2. Not for Jessie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mae and Bea talk about the future by the campfire (or so Gregg and Angus call it).

_Click-click_.

Little wisps of smoke curled up into the brisk air and drifted off in the wind like dust against a broom; her gaze followed them up, up, and away.  Glows of warmth tickled her nose at slightly off-beat intervals, and she mentally sent them down like electrical charges into her arms and curled-up legs.  As a warm lemon sunset burned away, the air had grown deceptively cold and thin and howly-swirly.  Dormant goosebumps took up residence on any and all exposed skin.

_Click-click_.

The night was fairly silent except for this — this, and the continuous and abrasive scraping of rock against rock.  Sediment coughed and hacked behind her head, only interrupted by the occasional mumbling of a dog and a bear.

“Agh!  Almost got it.”

“I hurt my finger…”

_Click-click_.  The smell of gas wafted through the breeze.

Her right hand dropped to her right side, where she blindly found the open bag of pretzels and took a handful.  Her cheeks puffed with pretzel knots, she let out a yawn.  Night was still a little ways off, but she’d mentally checked out of the day already.

_Crunch.  Click-click_.

A stone rolled along the sticks.  A voice that could only belong to Bea let out a long, disapproving sigh.

“Okay, this _really_ hurts…”

Mae rolled the lighter into her right hand, while her left hand dropped down to the open bag of Cheetos and shuffled amongst the curls.  “Are you guys _sure_ you don’t-”

“No!” both Angus and Gregg shot back.  She craned her neck back to catch their scornful looks, as they crouched over their makeshift firepit, one rock per hand.  Gregg pointed a finger at her.  “We can do this — _An_ …”

At the outset of the word, Mae’s eyebrows rose, daring him to finish.  Gregg sucked his lip into his mouth and rethought.

“ _He_ ,” Gregg tried again, and gestured to Angus, “was a scout.”

“Oh, really?  I hadn’t heard,” sniped Bea under her breath, across the fire from them and directly behind Mae.  She sat on crossed legs in the center of her sleeping bag, stretching over to the side.  One arm flattened out to balance her on the ground; the other reached skyward, cigarette nestled between her fingers and emanating a plume similar to Mae’s lighter.

She and Angus were having an interesting day.  Mae had a feeling Angus’s need to build his own fire was a result of losing the map fight.

_Click-click_.

Mae’s head dropped back down to the crooked log upon which she was precariously perched.  She shook cheese dust off her fingers and kicked her legs out, sending them thumping onto the wood.  A residual vibration ran up to her skull.

“It doesn’t look that bad,” Angus mumbled, his voice taking a gentler tone.  “There’s ice in the thermos if it starts to swell.”

Gregg’s shoes shuffled against the dirt as he stood up — presumably to get the thermos.

With another (cheesier) yawn, Mae decidedly shimmied herself up the log, enough to let her head hang off the end.  There, she came face-to-face with Bea’s knees — a pun she’d save for later — even booping her nose on the fabric of her leggings.  Bea kept in her pose, eyes drifting over to upside-down Mae.

Mae split a grin.

“Whatcha doing?”

Bea took a drag off her cig and straightened her arm again.  “Getting some of the blood back in my limbs.  You?”

_Click-click_.  She shrugged.

“Bored,” Mae informed her, reaching down to grab the bag of pretzels.  She dropped it in front of Bea’s lap, and took a few out.  “Want any?”

Bea sat up again, squinting at the bag.  “Has the cheese mingled with the pretzels yet?”

Mae shook her head affirmatively.  Bea took a few in her free hand and unfolded her legs, moving into a split-leg position.  This prompted Mae to turn her head toward the boys.

Angus was kissing Gregg’s finger like a romantic asshole and Mae could barely stand the sight.  Still, it was better than watching Bea’s ass as she folded herself in half over her spread legs.

As much as Mae was holding Gregg’s dare over him, Gregg reciprocated.  Every time Bea did something remotely attractive — and god knew how Gregg even had an eye for that — he sent Mae a side-eye and did the weird folded ear thing that he knew freaked her out.  She’d been sending him middle fingers until Angus noticed and looked a little confused.  Now she just glared.

Her gaze wandered back to Bea’s flattened back, her outstretched boots and bent elbows.  The hem of her skirt edged up a bit in back…

No matter where she looked, she was a perv.

It wasn’t that she was in denial or anything, in the end.  She knew her thing for Bea was getting out of hand — she just didn’t want _Gregg_ to know, or anyone else.  The second something like this came out, Gregg and Angus, the lovebirds of Possum Springs, would do everything in their power to stuff Mae and Bea into a closet together and lock the door.  And that wasn’t even an extreme.  Their only gay-couple friends were straight before Gregg and Angus got a hold of them.

Besides, if Bea liked girls, she wasn’t out and loud and proud about it… yet.

“So,” Bea began, words muffled by the sweater collar draping over her face.  “Last week at home.  Excited yet?”

Mae pressed her mouth shut to avoid her initial reaction, and went with something a bit tamer.  “Shitting bricks.”

Bea lifted one hand and twisted until she was sideways, facing Mae.  “Think you’re gonna relocate?”

“I don’t know,” she offered, with an upside-down shrug.  “My mom and dad are still here, plus, like, other people.  And apartments are cheap there.”

Turning the other direction, Bea added in an especially gravelly tone, probably due to the cold air, “These dumbasses might give you their apartment when they move.”

The two of them glanced up across the firepit, where Gregg and Angus sat in rapt attention over their stone-scraping of increasing volume.  Angus quietly coached Gregg on the motions, while his own rocks’ sparks were not sustainable enough to start the fire.  Still, they looked as though they were having fun roughing it together, even as the thin mountain air slowly suffocated asthmatic Angus…

A flash of orange flicked down from Bea’s raised hand, landing neatly in the pit.  Smoke rose like a serpent, swirling and growing in size as the cigarette infected the kindling to hasten the firemaking process along.  Angus’s glasses bounced with his scrunched-up nose.

“Switch to vape,” he mumbled in his own thick voice, and resumed rock-clacking.  Gregg had had enough, however, and freed his hands up to wrap around Angus’s shoulders.

“Sorry,” Bea said insincerely, and sat up.  Her hands dropped back to catch her weight; she let out a yawn.  “I’m fucking freezing.”

_Click-click_.  “And I want weenies,” Mae added, open lighter extended toward them.  Angus refused her, but Bea plucked it out of her hand and crawled closer to the fire.  Mae caught a fair-game peek at her ass as she leaned over and lit the kindling, blowing into it…

In her peripheral, she could feel Gregg’s eyes on her.  She eased her gaze into the fire.

Shuffling back onto her sleeping bag, Bea added, “Have you put out any applications?”

Mae refocused on the conversation while mentally stabbing Gregg in the arm.  “Um… uh.  Yeah.  Yup.”

“Uh-huh.”  Pulling her knees to her chest, she wrapped her overlong sleeves around her legs and curled up into a heating position.  “I could put in a good word for you at the Pickaxe, if you’re interested.”

“Working with you?”

Bea shot her an incredulous look.  “Not sure I like that reaction.  Would that be a problem?”

Lips parted, Mae reached a hand down to help roll herself over.  “No!  That’d be fun!”  Upright, her hand slipped and dropped her, chin nearly colliding with the log — but Bea grabbed her shoulder and held her up.  Mae nodded her thanks, then pulled herself up to straddle the log.  “It’d be like when we played sisters working as lounge singers in my Nana’s old flapper clothes.  Except instead of singing, we’re…  We’re…?”

“Stocking, and assisting customers in selecting, hardware and household effects,” Bea finished monotonously, as though she’d given this description to several others.  “It’s hell on earth, but it _pays_ … what is governmentally mandated.”

Mae shot her finger guns.  “I like that in a job.”

“You’ve never had a job.”

“But I know what I like,” she said, eyes narrowed.  Falling forward, she rested her chin on her fists and continued, “Would it bother you?  If I worked with you?  You’re all… particular about your space.”

Bea cocked her head peaceably.  “I’ll get over it.”

Fire made the low crackles of a beginning at their side, spreading throughout the sticks and drawing their eyes.  Angus quietly unwrapped the weenies while Gregg reached over him to retrieve the marshmallows.  The smell of real, full smoke swirled into the air.

“Remember when we went camping for Jessie’s birthday?” Mae prompted, watching the flames.  She glanced at Bea, who seemed to be listening.  “And she and I were fighting, because she broke our agreement to protest Valentine’s Day and sent out valentines, and Casey got one of them, and he told me because he secretly really love-hated Jessie and wanted me to break her nose.  And then I tried, at her _birthday party_ , but we wound up tripping and burning half our hair off in the fire.  And I was crying because my dad laughed at my hair when I came home, but you showed me how to shave the side of my head and make it look really badass.  And then I went back to school on Monday and Jessie looked like a freakshow and I looked awesome, but Casey still went home with Jessie.  And I wanted to shiv him for his betrayal, but you convinced me not to, and we got ice cream.  Do you remember that?”

Bea blinked at her for a moment as if to absorb all this information, then nodded.  “Yes.  We were eight.”

“Yeah.  Good times.”

“Not for Jessie.”

“Jessie was a thot and she deserved what she got.”

Bea shrugged her reluctant agreement.

A lull rested over them.  Mae watched Angus and Gregg impale their snacks and stick them over the fire — Angus hovering just above and Gregg plunging into the flames fearlessly.  Her stomach growled, eagerly awaiting the next free fire-poker.

“I miss that,” Mae mumbled, and yawned.  “Those days.  Everything was so… automatic.  Easy.”

“Controlled,” Bea remarked, eyebrows raised.  “At that age, you just can’t _do_ anything.”

“You don’t _have_ to do anything.”

“But don’t you ever _want_ to do something?” she asked, turning completely to look at Mae.  “Something that no one can do for you?  Something yours?”

Mae shrugged.  “Yeah, but I usually just fuck it up.  At least when I was little, it wasn’t my fault.”

Something in her eyes told Mae that this wasn’t Bea’s experience.

“I don’t know,” Bea said finally, and blinked toward the fire.  “For me, there’s relief in just… having autonomy.  Having the full power to just reach out and do whatever you want, without having to check with someone — without having to… think about what other people think.  Pure self.  Honesty.”

Mae looked up from the ground to catch a look of disorientation on Bea’s face as she admired the fire, lids heavy, hand over her stomach.  She looked tired, and hungry — she always looked tired and hungry, really.  But she also seemed at some sort of peace, comfortable with her place on earth and even optimistic.

For someone as apparently carefree and loose as Mae Borowski, she didn’t feel as though she’d achieved that level of honesty.  There were so many things she wanted to do that she just couldn’t.

Sighing, she looked to Gregg and Angus and requested, “Weenie?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mae, my sweet pansexual disaster. BEA SHALL LOVE YOU.


	3. Bugs to the Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mae and Bea contemplate existence while Mae works up a nerve or two.

Mae’s stomach was stocked to the brim with melted marshmallows.  She felt lighter, floaty, as she lay on her back amidst the grass and the dirt and the crickets, staring upward.

The sky was like a deep blue blanket with a million little holes poked into it, allowing bright white starlight to sneak into their universe.  A dying fire stained the left of her vision with coaly smoke, and the wind had died down enough to leave it there.  There was something static about the night, holding still around them — moving her in no particular direction, but letting her be.  It was chilly, but comfortable.

Bea was off smoking the last cig of the night; Gregg and Angus were curled up by the campfire, Gregg lazily squishing marshmallows between graham crackers while Angus drifted between sleeping and listening to the audiobook in his ears.  If Mae squinted, she could hear the voice of the audiobook reader — or she imagined she could.  It was British-sounding and relaxing.

She let out a yawn and curled her arms behind her head comfortably.  Even her arms felt like marshmallows — she was a sleepy, soft marshmallow floating atop the mountain, triumphant over the bag of Stuf-N-Puf and anything else that might oppose her.  When she closed her eyes, she felt like a pillowy ghost.

Firm footsteps approached.  Mae opened an eye to peek toward the sound.

Bea was stripped of her sweater and skirt, down to leggings and a tank cut at the midriff.  She didn’t seem cold at all, lazily strutting into the light of the fire and lobbing her cigarette into the flames.  The mere sight of her sleeveless dressing made Mae curl up into her hoodie, burying her hands in her pockets.

Muttering something to Angus — they’d made up over weenies and beer — Bea grabbed her sleeping bag and her giant-ass water bottle and trudged toward Mae.  Mae quickly focused on the sky above, and attempted to relocate the constellation she’d found minutes ago.

It was a little difficult because she’d also made it up minutes ago.

“Mind if I join you?” Bea asked.  Her sleeping bag dropped next to Mae’s ear with a whoosh, before she’d received an answer.

“Sure,” Mae said, and scooted over a bit.  “If you think you’re cool enough.”

Bea blinked, then knelt down to unroll her sleeping bag.  “I’ll fake it.”

And maybe it was in her imagination, but Bea actually smiled at her — with eye contact and everything.  She must have been really drunk, or delirious, or kidnapped by crazy mountain people and replaced with a clone whose only slight difference was its sunny disposition.  Mae was floored.

Before she could recover, Bea landed neatly beside her, bag crinkling beneath her hands.  She thudded her heel against the ground until her boot came loose and shook it off, then moved to the next one.

Leaning back to look up, Bea mumbled, “Nice night.”  She lay her head down and pulled her knee up to some kind of balance.  “Lots of stars.”

“Yeah,” Mae crooned, without looking at the stars at all.  Bea was so long, her legs running far past Mae’s — lithe, arms snaked behind her head, midriff thin and abs strong.  She was no floaty marshmallow.  She was a stalk of celery or something.

“What are you thinking about?”

Mae’s ear popped up; she cleared her throat.  “Nothing.  Why?”

Glancing sideways at her, Bea replied, “You’re quiet.  Quieter than I thought possible.”

She looked up quickly.  “Just thinking about the stars.  Constellations, horoscopes — all that dumb shit.”

At that, Bea shrugged a shoulder — Mae could hear it scrape against the fabric.  “I don’t think it’s dumb shit.  Not entirely.”

Mae’s eyes widened a bit.  “Neither do I.  I just thought you did.”

“Well, horoscopes, yeah,” Bea said, brow furrowed.  “People don’t have one personality because of the month they’re born in.  There’s much more psychology behind it — their experiences, their genetics…”

“Boring shit,” Mae remarked in an eerie voice.  Realizing her interruption, she added, “Sorry.  Go on.”

She tossed her head in surrender.  “I don’t know.  Horoscopes are only still around to sell newspapers, but… I don’t know what I think about the stars.  Like, what role they play in the universe, or who put them up there, or any of those existential crises.”

“I’d like to hug one,” Mae muttered, squinting up at the sky.  “A star.  I bet they’re warm and nice.”

Bea chuckled.  “Stars are several hundred times your size.  It would be like hugging the ground.”

She shrugged.  “I’ll do it.  I’ll do it right now.”

“Don’t — you’ll get all dirty.”

“That just makes me want to do it more.”

“A bug might crawl on you.”

“Then I’ll have gained a friend,” Mae said with a smile.  Then she quieted a moment, eyes narrowed in thought.

Sometimes she thought about bugs in relation to herself, and herself in relation to things like stars or skyscrapers or people above 5’8”, and it gave her shivers in the stomach.  She couldn’t kill bugs for that reason — for that uncomfortable question of, by those rights: could a skyscraper — should it be sentient and interested — squash her just because it wanted?  Would a particularly tall person be entitled to step on Mae should they find her lying in their path?  Were stars born with the inherent bestial authority to, on their call, plummet to the earth and make a small, marshmallowy cat one with the sediment?

With all that she’d experienced, she did lie awake some nights and wonder if a greater being might turn its eye on her… and decide to stomp. 

Frowning, she half-turned her head.  “Hey, Bea?”

“Yes, Mae?”

She tugged at her jacket pocket absentmindedly, and muttered, “Do you ever think about how tiny we are, compared to, like, the universe and stuff?  And how, like, we don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things and nothing we do really lasts?”

There was a moment where she was sure she could hear Bea’s eyebrows popping up.  “That’s dark, Mae.”

She could get like that sometimes.

“I don’t know,” Mae muttered, grimacing at her own outburst.  “It’s just… sizes.  Maybe we’re bugs to the stars and they’re bugs to the planets and we’re all just entertaining ourselves until something squishes us.  Not that that’s a bad existence — it’s better than like, having to be god, probably, because we only have to worry about us.  But once it’s over, does it… does it go anywhere?”

This was the purest form of word vomit, and Mae could feel her regret preemptively creeping on her shoulder.  She shrugged and glanced toward a different part of the sky, so that Bea could not, by any means, make eye contact.

“You know,” came Bea, like a whisper after a hurricane.  “The light from most of the stars we see is a few hundred years old.  So we’re actually seeing the past.  One of these stars could explode right now and we wouldn’t know for centuries.”

Mae pinched the corner of her mouth.  “That’s sad.”

“Eh.”  Pulling her arm out from under her, she shook out what was presumably a numb feeling.  “I think it’s nice.  Even after they die, they leave their mark for a long time.  That’s what most people want, I think.”

“I just wanna make it out alive.”

A beat passed.  Bea’s head turned audibly.

“You see the flaw in your logic there, right?”

“I heard it,” Mae said, pouting.  Her arms tossed out in the air.  “I don’t know!  I don’t have anything to contribute to the world.  I don’t want to do kids and all the same boring shit everyone else does, so…  I guess I just disappear once I go.”

“I guess,” Bea muttered — hopefully in relation to herself, and not just an agreement that Mae would fade out like a dying star.

Mae squeezed her eyes shut, withholding a sigh.  She always did this; she always turned a good time into a bad time, because her brain didn’t like her.  She couldn’t see it coming, either.  It just happened and left her with an awkward silence to fill.

“There’s something I like about it, though.”

Her eyes opened at the sound.  She waited a few seconds before looking to Bea, waiting for her to finish.

Staring upward, Bea continued, “The impermanence of it all.  It takes away that heavy weight, you know — morality and perfection and all that bullshit.  All this talk of being better than our urges and…  It’s just…”

Mae blinked.  “We’re animals.”

Bea lifted her head to glance at Mae, thoughtful.  “Something like that.  I mean, you shouldn’t be a shitty person by any means, but ultimately, mistakes vanish with everything else.”

“It’s all a fever dream,” Mae crooned, waving her hand in front of her.  “We live, we die, and we enjoy it.”

“And three-thousand lightyears away,” Bea concluded, in a softer tone, “maybe we’ll still matter to someone.”

The stars seemed to twinkle in agreement.  Mae sighed, observing their long-past dance.  “Yeah.”

She didn’t know about Bea, but personally, she’d like to matter to someone right now.  But that was a little too dark for tonight.

Not in a million years would Mae have thought that Beatrice Santello, queen of practicality and growing up and the ever-present expression of disillusion, could talk about things like this.  The abstract, useless thoughts usually sorted themselves out between Mae and Gregg — Bea just drove them home when they were drunk off their asses and conspiring well into the sunrise hours.

Her opinions were an odd mixture of hopelessness and relief.

“Bea?”

“Yes, Mae?”

Her mouth twitched over the words.  “Do you believe in anything?”

There was a pause; Bea’s voice softened.  “Some things.  What do you mean?”

“Like,” Mae began, shaking her head.  “Instincts, or karma, or… everything working out for good?”

She considered this, and propped her knee up with a decisive bounce.  “Instincts, yes.  Karma, no.  Everything working together… too early to call for me.”

“God?”

“No fuckin’ idea.”

“Fate?” Mae continued, trying to contain her curiosity.  “Like… soulmates, or divine meetings?”

Bea bit her tongue.  “Maybe.”

And though Mae was sure she was bugging the hell out of Bea, she added, “Do you believe in taking risks?”

It was evident that Bea had not expected this kind of question; she turned to look directly at Mae, so that she had no choice but to return the gaze.  “I…  What kind of risks?”

Mae sucked in her lip.  “Like, risks that could ruin everything, but you just can’t _not_ _know_ what would happen.”  Her eyes drifting down from Bea’s, she murmured, “Like, if it felt like fate was leading you somewhere, or instincts, or something you can _feel_ …  Do you do it?”

Bea blinked, mouth dropping to a serious position.  “Does it make sense?”

Her gaze settled on Bea’s lips.  “Maybe.”

At that instant, the night felt much colder.  The wind was inching its way back over the mountain, brushing the thin air away from them; the fire was dimming behind Mae, something she could feel more than see.  Her hands were stiff, cold.  It was terror.

Setting a hand between their sleeping bags, Bea leaned closer, casually, and muttered, “I think I’d take the risk.”

Her heart dropped into her stomach.  Her eyes widened, and her lungs drew a few verses of thin, incomplete air.  She bit her cheek, hard.

“Hey, Bea?”

“Yes, Mae,” Bea whispered, and pulled Mae in by the string of her hoodie.

The kiss came like a tidal wave on an unsuspecting island village — preparations had been made, but they were impossibly shortcoming.  Mae’s mind had shut down; her hand fumbled into the grass to balance her as she leaned further into Bea’s lips, desperately attempting to catch up with the situation…

But Bea was in no hurry.  Releasing the hood-string, her hand moved to Mae’s chin, just a featherlight touch to keep her afloat.  Her lips charged against Mae, soft and slow but strong enough to leave an impression, and quiet enough that Mae could almost lose track of her senses.  It was like stepping into a vacuous theatre in the dead of night, when no one was around to hear you screech out all the rampage of thoughts in your mind.  It was like heaven if all the angels were to move on and all that remained were this one streetlight — this one fountain — this one warm, _great_ feeling isolated to this one fleeting moment.

It ended, because it had to end.  Bea pulled away with the slow open of her eyes and the easy close of her lips, looking on Mae with a powerful, unreadable regard.

Mae’s mouth fumbled over silence until something hastily came out, too soon, too stupid.  “I… I… shit, _shit_ -”

Bea just watched her, hardly seeming to place stock in this reaction.

“I,” Mae tried again, and shook her head, “can’t think of anything smart to say…”

She couldn’t think of any words at all.  It was just a million exclamation points in varying fonts and sizes, bouncing up and down the college-ruled notebook of her mind.  She was going to pee.  That was the first coherent though she made, and that wasn’t a good one — not at all.

“Mae-”

“Wait!”  Mae’s hand shot up, cutting her off.  “I can think of something.  Gimme a second…”

Bea was smiling, and that made it even more difficult to verbalize.  Where were the- what was Bea expecting?  Was it too early to express undying devotion?  Should she play it coy?  What were her hands doing?  Where were the crazy mountain people when she needed them the _most_?  What, if anything, could save her from this horrible awkward silence?

“Did you just call me anus?”

Mae’s ears shot up at the elevated volume of Angus’s voice behind her.  She remained still, listening.

“Uh…” Gregg began with a crack.  “Yes.”

Mae’s eyes widened.  A wicked grin threatened.

“Why?”

Bea’s brow furrowed, gaze shifting between the scene behind Mae and… Mae, who was snickering already.  She narrowed her eyes at Mae’s apparent mischief.

“Uh…”  Gregg was in audible distress.  A long pause accompanied this response.  “P-pet name?”

Mae covered her mouth to keep her laughter silent and painful; she doubled over, knees kicking up to curl into herself.  Angus’s stunned silence was the worst thing Mae had ever heard in her entire life, and she could hardly control the reaction it incited.

Sounding horribly lost, Angus’s voice softened.  “Um, Gregg…  I don’t… _like_ that.”

Mae howled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus ends my first Camping!Fic, and my first story for NITW. Let me know what you thought! :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is one of my earliest fics for NITW, so I'm still getting a feel for the voices. Leave a comment or something idk


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